This plugin hasnt been tested with the latest 3 major releases of WordPress. It may no longer be maintained or supported and may have compatibility issues when used with more recent versions of WordPress.

Widget Entries

Description

The text widget that comes with WordPress is one of the its most useful features because of its power and flexibility. It admits HTML code but it is not very comfortable to code in that small box, so that is the reason because some WYSIWYG widgets were created some later, you can add images, and format the text easily.

But widgets are pieces of our sites intended to change some often, and it would be nice to have revisions, or upload images just for them, use shortcodes… cutting the story short, to handle widgets as they were posts.

Widget Entries plugin creates the Widget post-type in the administration area to make easier the edition of the text widgets, and also register a new widget to import the widget entries easily.

This way of working has many advantages:

You can format your widget with the WordPress editor.

You can upload images directly to be shown in your widgets.

You can have widgets drafts.

You can use shortcodes inside your widget.

You can get back to a previous version of your widgets thanks to the revision feature.

You can export your widgets contents.

And you have more benefits like using php scripts inside the widgets.

This is the best way to manage your widgets when your theme has several sidebars, or different sidebars for every page. I recommend to use the Custom Sidebars plugin to create and assign sidebars to posts and pages.

Installation

Active the plugin in the plugin menu panel in your administration area.

From inside your WordPress installation, in the plugin section.

Search for widget entries plugin

Download it and then active it.

Once, you have the plugin activated, you will find a new post-type called ‘Widgets’ in your menu. There you will be able to create and manage your custom widgets.
A new widget will be able in Appearance >> Widgets menu, called ‘Widget Entry’ that allows to use all the widgets entries created.

FAQ

How can I use PHP inside my widgets?

It’s possible to add some scripting to your widgets using the shortcodes [php][/php]. All the text inside those tags will be interpreted as PHP code.
The PHP execution is based in the exceptional plugin Allow PHP in Post and Pages. Have a look to its page for further usage instructions.

I want my widget to display the message `[php]Hola amigo[/php]`. How can I do it?

Use the shortcodes [php off][/php]: If you write [php off]Hola amigo[/php] the widget will display [php]Hola amigo[/php].

I have a lot of widget entries in my WordPress, and selecting them for appearing in the sidebar is a pain, because the list is too long. How can i make it shorter?

If you have created a lot of widget entries I’m sure you are not using them. You can unpublish (save as a draft) the ones that you don’t use it anymore, and they will not appear in the select box of the widget.

The capability needed is ‘edit_theme_options’, the same that is needed to edit sidebar widgets. You can change the capability modifying the ‘cap_required’ variable at the begining of the plugin source.